Abby Johnson had never felt so alone. Sitting in her Planned Parenthood office and weeping, Johnson, who was raised Southern Baptist, knew God had called her to leave her job as director of the women’s health and abortion clinic and join forces with the Coalition for Life advocates just down the street.
The call was unmistakable. But the courage to take the step of faith to leave her job with no other prospects in sight — and invest herself in a movement that was diametrically opposed to the life she had lived the past eight years — was harder to muster.
Other than her husband Doug, she had no one she could confide in. Her co-workers, whom she considered friends, would not understand her decision. Christian ideals, Johnson said, often were mocked by the Planned Parenthood employees and the pro-choice advocates she knew. So she kept quiet.
She believed her church would not understand either. The Johnsons were members of an Episcopal church because they had been turned away from membership in the Baptist congregations they visited. She said some in those congregations made clear that she and her husband were welcome to attend worship services, but church membership was another matter.
But the Episcopal congregation they joined supported her efforts in her job at Planned Parenthood.
So there she sat. Counting the days until the next abortion would be performed in her clinic, knowing she could have no part in it — and coming to the numbing realization that, beyond her home, there was no one to tell her she was making the right choice.
Except the people down the street.
Johnson and the staff of the Coalition for Life knew each other. It was not an antagonistic relationship but a mutual acknowledgement that they stood on opposing sides of a great divide over abortion. When Johnson walked into the back door of the coalition offices on Oct. 6, the staff was stunned.
What brought Johnson, 29, to that monumental moment was a compassionate heart for others — a trait that led her to Planned Parenthood’s staff and stayed intact while she denied the harsh realities of abortion. It was that same compassion — stirred by the Holy Spirit and witnessing an abortion via an ultrasound — that brought reality into focus.
“I grew up Southern Baptist,” said Johnson, who moved from her native Louisiana to Texas as a teenager.
Johnson’s volunteer activities with Planned Parenthood during college at Texas A&M University had led to a paid position with the clinic, giving pre-abortion counseling. As Johnson was about to graduate with her degree in psychology, the clinic promoted her to director of community outreach and health education. The job allowed Johnson to extol the virtues of the women’s health services that Planned Parenthood provided in the conservative community of Bryan-College Station. It also afforded Johnson’s conscience a rationalization — she was working for better health and the prevention of unplanned pregnancies through birth control.
Shortly after marrying Doug, she became pregnant. It was an unplanned but not unwanted pregnancy. Johnson thought it would be awkward for her, as a pregnant woman, to give abortion counseling.
On the contrary, her then-director replied, “It will be good for them to see what they don’t want,” Johnson recalled being told.
With the birth of their little girl, Grace, in November 2006, the Johnsons knew they needed to be in church. They had stopped attending because they could not find a church that would allow them to join as long as Johnson worked for Planned Parenthood. The couple sought out a church that would not criticize or question her work. The Episcopal church they joined “was very supportive of Planned Parenthood and my job,” Johnson said. One of her co-workers also attended the church and two other clinic employees were Catholic. In choosing to join the church, Johnson sealed a self-affirming bubble of colleagues, friends, and church family who would not call her to account for the apparent contradiction in her own life of professing Christ and supporting the abortion industry.
But her Christian faith would not let her ignore the conflict.
“Faith is what led me out of the abortion industry. But it was a struggle many times,” Johnson said. The clinic performed abortions two Saturdays a month. Although she was not directly involved in the procedure most of the time, there were times when she was present during an abortion and, the next day, felt guilty as she sat in church.
Despite twinges of remorse, Johnson still adamantly believed she was pro-choice. The clinic, she rationalized, provided so many other services that were a benefit to women that the abortions could be considered only a minor, though profitable, branch of the business.
But when Johnson, who had been promoted to director of the clinic in 2007, was approached by her superior about the need to bring in more money to the clinic via abortions, she became troubled.
Then in late September Johnson was asked to assist with an abortion. A third set of hands was needed. Usually the process involves only the doctor and nurse practitioner. But on this day the doctor on call was using an ultrasound machine during the procedure and needed assistance with the abdominal probe. This, Johnson said, was how he performed abortions in his own clinic.
The use of the ultrasound is not common, she said, because it takes longer to perform the procedure, but it is the safest practice because it allows the physician to see inside the uterus and view in detail exactly what he is doing. It gave Johnson the same vantage point.
“I’m watching [the monitor]. I didn’t want to look but I couldn’t stop,” she recalled. She saw the cannula — the instrument used to remove the fetus — move toward the 13-week-old baby. And she continued to watch as the tiny life recoiled in vain from the instrument.
“The first thing I thought about was Grace,” Johnson said, recalling that first ultrasound image of her daughter Grace and how she posted it on the refrigerator and sent copies to family members.
While watching the abortion take place in real time, she said she recognized the fact that there had been a life in the woman, and she had played a part in ending it. Johnson went to the recovery room later in the afternoon to check on the woman. The guilt became overwhelming.
“I had taken away her chance to be a mother,” she said.
Johnson did a lot of praying and crying. Her husband was sympathetic and supportive of any decision she made, but there was no one in the clinic she could speak to for counsel.
Johnson reluctantly returned to work the next Monday, the week coming and going with no decisive action on her part. The next week would be different.
“I felt like the clock was ticking. There would be more abortions on Saturday. I’m sitting in my office. I don’t want to be there and I’m crying. And Saturday was coming.”
She knew what she had to do, but needed the extra measure of faith to step out. She saw two women from the nearby Coalition for Life center praying outside her clinic. The women were taking part in the 40 Days for Life campaign, which organized prayer vigils outside abortion clinics from late September through early November (www.40daysforlife.com).
“God was shouting at me to go to the center.”
So she did. The Planned Parenthood director walked into the Coalition for Life center, and “our jaws just hit the floor,” said Bobby Reynoso, Coalition for Life director of communications. He said they sat down with her and listened as she poured out her story of stress and conviction. She had come to their doorstep to confess she could no longer be a part of abortion.
“It’s not what we were expecting. But as Christians we should be,” Reynoso said. After all, the pro-life volunteers had been praying faithfully outside the clinic for years and, most recently, during the 40 Days for Life. The staff and volunteers had prayed specifically for Johnson. Reynoso said Coalition for Life members have been excited to be a part of what has unfolded before them but can take little, if any, credit for the miracle that has taken place.
Since turning in her resignation in October, Johnson has made numerous media appearances. She asked that Christians pray for her as she looks for a new job and, most likely, a new church. She said her parents were thrilled with her decision. (BP)
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